


Maybe You're What I Never Saw Coming

by asexual-fandom-queen (writeordietrying)



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Closeted Character, Coming Out, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 05:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13734150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeordietrying/pseuds/asexual-fandom-queen
Summary: A look at Jack and Dylan's relationship through a series of missing moments. Set during the events of NYSM2.





	Maybe You're What I Never Saw Coming

**Author's Note:**

> Why this fandom and why this crackship, I don't know, but sometimes you just have to ride the inspiration wave where it takes you. I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it, and please, please, please leave kudos and – even more importantly – comments below!
> 
> Title taken from [Lost My Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=febXGkKjWZ8) by Alice Kristiansen.

“Okay, so then, what about girls? Like, relationships?”

Panic cascades down Jack’s spine like ice water.  He feels Lula’s eyes on him, searching, and maybe a touch flirtatious, and he wishes it didn’t make his skin crawl, but it does. He lets a reluctant groan rattle in his throat, and Lula raises her brows.

“What?” she asks. Her eyes stay glued to the task at hand, grabbing scattered cards off the dusty floor, but Jack casts her a scrutinizing, sidelong glance as thoughts play a mile a minute through his head.

_i’mgayi’mgayi’mgayishouldjusttellheri’mgayit’snotabigdeali’mgay_

He debates it, repeats it like a record stuck in a skip, as he lets the silence stretch out a moment too long. He feels the weight of her stare on him when he shifts his own gaze back to the floor, feels it like an uncomfortable itch in a place he can’t quite name, let alone scratch.

 _I should tell her_ , Jack thinks, so he finally opens his mouth, only to spill out like second nature, “look, it’s not something I’m proud of.”

Which is an uncomfortable truth, though he’d thought – he’d really thought – it was something he’d be able to bury long enough for one conversation. For one coming out. But if he can’t say the words to himself, perhaps it shouldn’t come as such a shock that he can’t bring himself to say them to anyone else.

“But, every girl I get close to, I end up taking their trust.”

Which feels entirely too much like an uncomfortable truth as well.

Then, he cracks a joke about picking dates’ pockets, Lula empties hers to lay out all the things he’s lifted since leaving the hotel, and despite the nervous churning in his gut at the way she smiles at him and touches his arm, he has to admit, he’s glad Dylan brought her on board and that she’s here with them now.

Though not as much as he wishes Dylan were too.

 

* * *

 

When Danny pulls Dylan from the water and hauls his still, waterlogged body to shore, Jack’s chest constricts so tightly he feels the pain of it down to his toes. He scrambles to get a hand on Dylan’s chest, to feel for the rhythmic beating of his heart beneath Jack’s numbed, shaking fingers. The chorus of Dylan’s name shouted by his fellow Horsemen – hell, maybe even by himself – sounds far away, ringing in his ears like a Tchaikovskian overture through cotton wool.

Dylan heaves up a lungful of water, and it’s not until Jack hears the subsequent laboured breath he draws in that he’s able to breathe again himself.  Even then, Jack can’t take his hand off Dylan’s chest, can’t lose the tether of the steady _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ keeping his sanity in check.

“Jesus,” Jack says, rushed and threadbare on a relieved exhale. “You scared the hell out of us, man,” he adds, because he can’t be too personal. He can never be too personal with Dylan, but especially not now, when Dylan is covered head to foot in the very same water that tried to drown him, lungs rattling with it, eyes bloodshot.

So, he focuses on the mission instead. While the others exchange sentiment and long, lingering touches, Jack pulls back, focuses on the stick.

Discovers the fake.

 

* * *

 

Jack taps gently on the sturdy wooden door that separates him from a small, informal seating room a level up from Iong’s hidden memorabilia store. He holds a soft, blue blanket firm against his chest, letting the heat of his body seep into the fabric as he waits for a reply from inside.

“It’s me,” Jack croaks when the silence stretches on too long. His voice sounds loud, harsh, blunt, in the eerie half-dim of the hall, voices drifting up from downstairs as Lula and Merritt wrap Danny in a blanket of his own.

“Come in.”

Dylan’s response is small and unsure, projecting a kind of nonchalance that doesn't land. Jack eases the door open, and the creak of its hinges is biting and shrill. Stepping inside, Jack takes in the sight of Dylan before him, damp, fragile, sitting at the centre of a sofa with his knees curled to his chest.  

“Ba Ba and Li sent me up with this for you,” Jack says, jostling the blanket in his arms. Dylan glances up at him, barely, then down at the blanket, then back to some ineffable point in space between nothing and the floor.

“Since you kinda ran off on us.”

Dylan says nothing. Jack shuts the door behind him as gently as he can, but the snap of wood against wood still makes him flinch.

“Dylan, man, are you okay?” Jack asks.

Dylan blinks hard, shakes his head. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Jack’s heart thuds pitifully in his chest. He doesn’t know what to make of seeing Dylan like this, of sharp, intelligent eyes rendered dull, of steel bones bowing and warping. It makes him ache, makes him yearn, makes him grieve. Makes him feel too many things he doesn’t know how to translate into words, words that may not be well received even if he were to find them.

Moving forward, measured and slow, Jack crouches to his knees to look Dylan in the eyes. He unfurls the blanket and fans it out, wrapping it around Dylan’s shoulders like a shroud – God damn, it was almost a shroud – to combat the moisture clinging to his skin, evaporating and leaving swaths of icy flesh in its place.

“You wanna talk about what happened?” Jack asks, feels Dylan tense under his hands. “It must have– I mean, to be like your dad– shit, sorry.”

Jack flinches as he feels Dylan do the same. He runs his palms over Dylan’s shoulders, down his biceps, along his forearms, and feels the tension clinging tight like a vice.

“That had to have been really traumatic,” Jack tries again.

Dylan swallows thick but doesn’t reply. Jack slides his hands forward until they land atop Dylan’s own, clenched so tight together, Jack’s fingers ache in sympathy. Ever so gently, Jack pries Dylan’s fingers apart, massages taut tendons and coaxes reluctant bones, until they’re drawn apart and held delicately in Jack’s own.

“I just kept thinking that’s what it must have been like for him,” Dylan rasps through gritted teeth. Jack’s heart skips a beat. “That that’s how he suffered, knowing people were right there who could save him, with all of us just watching–”

Dylan stops himself short, sucks in a sharp, pained breath and pinches his face.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack says. He reaches out impulsively, cups his warm, broad palm around the curve of Dylan’s neck, and Dylan lets him, leans into him.

“I was there,” he continues. “I watched my father drown. I was there.”

“So were a lot of people,” Jack replies, and he’s not sure if it’s the right thing to say, not sure if it’s what Dylan needs to hear, if it’s empathetic or just dismissive, but it’s all Jack has, and everything he has, he wants to give to Dylan freely.  “You couldn’t have done anything more for him than anyone else.”

“I got myself out,” Dylan whispers, and that’s it, isn’t it?

Jack shivers at the gravity of the statement.

There’s nothing to say after that. No expression of regret or relief. No condolence. No offer of absolution. All Jack can think to do is rock onto the balls of his feet and press a long, intimate kiss to the centre of Dylan’s forehead and cling to his neck like a lifeline. Dylan accepts the kiss without protest, melts into Jack’s touch, into the back of the couch.

“Come downstairs when you’re ready,” Jack says, moving fluidly to stand, all the while rubbing soft, slow circles under Dylan’s right ear with the pad of his thumb. “I’ll tell the others you’re okay, just taking a minute. They’ll be chill. They know you need it.”

Jack withdraws his hand, takes a step back, but as he does, Dylan shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “It’s okay.”

Sliding his feet from the sofa cushions, Dylan stands, a little shaky on his feet at first, but compensating fast. “I don’t need a minute,” he continues. “I had one. Now we move on.”

Jack’s chest tightens. He can’t put his finger on why.

  


* * *

 

Lula kisses him on the wing of the plane, fireworks crashing overhead, the entire city of London screaming like a natural disaster behind them. He kisses her back, feels her nails scrape the back of his skull at the base of his hairline and trace gentle patterns into his skin.

Jack waits for something to happen. Waits for a wave of disgust to roll up from his belly. Waits for an uncomfortable tickle under his skin. Hell, a part of him even waits for magic – a spark, a zing, _something_ – like the press of lips against damp, wrinkled skin in a dark room in Macau.

Like the press of a warm, yielding chest against his back, reveling in the high of a performance expertly done.

It doesn’t feel wrong, it just feels like nothing.

 

* * *

 

“Do you wanna talk about whatever weirdness has been going on between us since we kissed?”

Lula is nothing if not a straight shooter. Jack should have known he couldn’t put her off long. Still, a part of him thought he’d have time, time to brace himself, time to prepare, time to learn to be okay himself before asking it of someone else. More time than four hours. So much more time than four hours.

“Hello, Jack,” Lula prompts when it takes him too long to respond.

“I’m gay,” Jack blurts, just like that, no filter, no finesse.

Lula goes abruptly still, stopped short in her tracks as she paces the length of the warehouse in which they’ve taken cover to lay low. It’s just the two of them here, shut into what must have been at one point a foreman’s office, but Jack feels so incredibly exposed, like infinite eyes are on him all at once. More eyes than at the MGM. More eyes than when the whole world’s been watching.

“Oh,” Lula says, short, succinct,  _surprised._

Jack can’t breathe. He can’t talk, can’t move, can’t think. Everything is frozen in a pure, crystalline moment of panic. Jack feels unmoored, feels his sense of controlled pulling out from under him like a rug.

“I thought you were flirting with me,” Lula says next, not soft or gentle, not the exact thing Jack needs, but better than most of the scenarios he’s run through his head.

“I probably was,” Jack replies. He’s stiff. Unsure. “It’s, you know, you learn how to do it. Like recite state capitals. Because you’re supposed to.”

Lula stares at him. Her eyes bore in with painful depth and precision, and Jack swallows hard.

“I didn’t mean for you to think–” he starts, then cuts the sentence short. “I mean, I’m sorry, Lula, I am. I didn’t know how–”

“Oh my God,” Lula says, and Jack feels his throat swell shut. “Are you a baby gay?”

Her words take him aback. “A what?”

“A baby gay,” she repeats, taking a long, determined stride forward, bridging the gap between them. “Have you never done this before? Like, is this your first time coming out to someone? Am I your first?”

Jack winces. “Is that obvious, or–”

“Holy shit,” Lula interrupts again. “Dude, that’s such a big deal. You seem nervous as hell. Don’t– just breathe, alright? You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

The laughter that bubbles up in Jack’s chest verges on hysteric. “Kinda feels like it, too,” he says.

Lula grabs him by the arm and steers him to a nearby office chair, an old relic from the 70s, orange upholstery and all. “Jesus,” she says. “Just, sit down. You’re shaking.”

Jack sits, and Lula pulls up a wooden chair across from him. She takes both his hands in hers and crouches low, forcing their eyes to meet. Jack know his must look crazed, but Lula’s are steady.

“First, thank you for sharing this with me,” she says, and something in her tone makes Jack honestly believe her. “Second, this changes nothing between us, alright?”

Tilting her head as a thought occurs to her, Lula amends, “except I’m not gonna try to kiss you anymore.”

Jack nods. “Okay,” he says, a little shell-shocked, hands still trembling as his adrenaline crashes, everything from coming out to stopping Walter and Tressler finally catching up to him like a freight train with faulty brakes.

“Am I really the first?” Lula asks.

Jack nods. “You’re nearly edging me out, actually,” he adds, and Lula scoffs, just one short, disbelieving chuckle.

“Jesus, you really are in hard shape, Wilder, aren’t you?” she teases.

Shifting back in her seat, Lula lets go of Jack’s hands and adds, “you could have told us all a lot sooner, you know. We’d all have been cool with it. Except maybe Altas. He can be kind of an ass sometimes. I get why you waited with him.”

And despite it all, Jack laughs, laughs in genuine amusement and admiration of Lula May, not for the first time in their friendship, and hopefully not the last.

“We are friends, aren’t we?” Jack asks, following his unspoken train of thought to its natural conclusion.

Lula smiles. “Of course we’re friends,” she says. “We took down two millionaire douchebags together. That kind of stuff’s for life.”

And Jack’s seen Henley come and go, knows the thrill of the chase is sometimes fickle and fleeting, but still, in the places it counts, he believes her.

 

* * *

 

When they pull up to the Greenwich Observatory, offering Lula his hand feels as natural as breathing. His palm on her back grounds him, tethers him, keeps everything in perspective. She knows, and the world hasn’t fallen apart around them. She knows, and the companionship they share is only stronger for it. She knows, and she loves him, and the edges don’t slot together so awkwardly anymore.

She can know.

People can know.   

 

* * *

 

For Jack, it feels a bit like déja vù, standing outside a solid wooden door, knowing Dylan is on the other side, hurting, grieving, _spiraling._  He doesn’t know if he’s wanted now, deep inside the bowels of The Eye, this thing Dylan’s been offered like a throne, any more than he did holding Ba Ba’s blue blanket in Macau. Still, he knocks on the frame.

“It’s me,” Jack announces, and just like before, Dylan replies, “come in.”

A part of Jack wonders if maybe he’ll always answer _come in_.  

“You kinda snuck off,” Jack says as he enters, shutting the door behind him with a deafening _clack_ that barely makes a sound.

Again, Dylan sits at the centre of a sofa, but this time, it belongs to him. _His_ sofa in _his_ office in _his_ secret headquarters bestowed upon him by _his_ father’s former partner. The man he’d spent the past thirty years devoted to ruining.

“You know Danny can get to be a bit much,” Dylan says.

Jack smirks. “I thought that was me.”

Dylan smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Jack shuffles forward, deliberate, seeking. “Can I?” he asks, gesturing to the empty space at Dylan’s right.

“By all means,” Dylan replies.

Jack sits gingerly, angles his body to face Dylan, one knee pulled up, braced on the backrest, while his ankle presses into the cushion. He drapes his arm over the back, bends at the elbow, but lets his fingers linger close enough to brush Dylan’s shoulder.

“Crazy about Thaddeus, huh?” Jack prompts.

Dylan smiles sadly, like he’s impressed Jack knows how to read him, or maybe like he’s flattered Jack cares, but either way, dreading the circumstances too much to find any real joy in whatever revelry tempts him.

“I spent my whole life hating a man who probably hated himself more than I ever could,” Dylan says. He’s completely open, quick to share. Jack’s heart beats out of time. This feels special.

But it feels awful, too.

“You didn’t know,” Jack says. “He didn’t tell you.”

“And why is that?” Dylan snaps, moisture gathering around the ducts of his eyes. Jack’s chest aches for him. “What is it about me that makes me the kind of person people feel like they can’t be honest with? It’s because I’m a liar, right? Because I spent so many years lying about who I was. About what I really wanted.”

“I think that’s kinda admirable,” Jack counters. He considers reaching out and placing a hand on Dylan’s knee, offering him some kind of physical comfort, but the time’s not right. Not yet. “That you care that deeply that you’d never just let something go. That you love with everything you have.”

“Hate with it, too,” Dylan remind him.

Jack frowns. “If that’s the trade off,” he says. “There are worse things.”

Dylan shakes his head. Jack watches him work his jaw, fighting tooth and nail against the dam of emotions walled up behind his eyes.

“For thirty years,” Dylan says. “This hatred’s all I’ve been. This vendetta. And I was wrong. I was wrong and it’s over and who am I supposed to be now? What am I know? How can I– Everything I am is gone.”

Just like that, the floodgates open. A bitter, ugly sob rips from Dylan’s throat, and tears spring to Jack’s eyes watching the pain lay him low, curl him into himself like an implosion, like the death of a star.  

“Hey, come here,” Jack whispers. He slides in flush against Dylan’s side and runs his fingers through his hair the way Jack remembers his mother doing for him, before things got bad, before the smell of her perfume changed and the touches stopped being gentle.

Dylan folds into him, fights the tears but doesn’t fight Jack, then stops fighting those, too. Jack presses his lips to Dylan’s temple, whispers nonsense in his ear, tells him he loves him, because it’s as simple a fact as any he could offer.

Dylan cries until the energy leaves him, saps him of even the strength to keep himself upright. Jack bears the weight of him as he slumps against his chest, boneless and exhausted and handsome all the same.

“Thank you,” Dylan whispers, because an apology would only fall flat, and Jack would never accept it. The fact that Dylan knows that, feels comfortable enough to honour that, makes Jack’s heart stop.

“You need some rest,” Jack replies, before he says anything else, like _it’s no trouble_ or _any time_ or  _always._

“Jack,” Dylan says, and Jack’s been so careful not to dwell on Dylan’s body in his space he’s completely missed the other man shifting so they’re met face to face. Dylan’s eyes are wet and tired, but they’re bright again, too, brighter than Jack’s seen them since that night with the safe.

“I do, too, you know,” Dylan says, and Jack’s thoughts skid to a screeching halt. “Some kinda way. Maybe even that way. If not now, then soon.”

Jack swallows hard. “We don’t have to decide anything today,” he whispers, his voice croaky, stalling in his throat.

Dylan nods. “Not deciding,” he agrees. “But not holding back, either.”

And then he’s leaning in, and Jack’s moving instinctually to meet him halfway. Their mouths meet in a concerto of passion and longing and _care_ – deep, unwavering care. Dylan’s stubble feels unfamiliar under Jack’s hands, but so do the tongues of fire licking his belly, warming his cheeks and scorching his chest. Dylan holds him like he’s precious, and Jack returns the favour every way he knows how.

“Stay with me tonight?” Dylan asks, and it’s raw and vulnerable and open, something Jack isn’t used to seeing, but knows deep down he sees more than anyone else. “I need someone with me, alright? I don’t wanna wake up alone.”

“Whatever you need,” Jack replies. “I’m just really glad you’re okay, you know that?”

Dylan scoffs. “I don’t know if I’d call myself okay,” he says.

Jack nods. He understands.

“How ‘bout I’m just glad you’re here?”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](www.asexual-fandom-queen.tumblr.com).


End file.
